Types of Services

Have you defined a tailored marketing plan that capitalizes on your unique value proposition given the competitive playing field and industry dynamics you anticipate at product launch? Without a well conceived go-to-market plan based upon a thorough understanding of customer needs and competitive landscape, companies risk developing a product with insufficient competitive advantage or insufficient leverage for achieving launch and sales goals. Vision & Execution identifies the most lucrative target market and feature set achievable for launch. We provide product and segment extension road maps and select the most cost-effective programs for the product, industry, and channel. Vision & Execution identifies the operational policies and procedures that build customer loyalty and demand in the most efficient manner. Clients benefit by being able to focus precious resources where they can achieve the most beneficial return on their investment.

Do you know what your product is worth to your potential customers? Do you really understand what your fully-loaded costs are to deliver the product? Vision & Execution clarifies your value proposition in dollar terms so you can price for maximum revenue. We identify the most compelling packaging and pricing options that generate purchase demand and repeat purchase. We also help you calculate and understand your true cost structure to ensure your pricing maximizes your margins. Achieve competitive advantage without leaving money on the table.

Have you fully evaluated the potential for your new product? Do you know which segments deliver the strongest beach head to achieve your sales goals and company milestones? Are you sure of the best way to reach new markets with an established product? Vision & Execution analyzes what customers want as well as the competitive landscape to provide focus for the product concept. In a multi-concept environment, we help prioritize the concepts and determine which are worth pursuing, letting you make the best go/no-go decision. We identify critical, desired, and extraneous product features to reduce your time to revenue. We identify bundle and pricing strategies necessary for the product success. For products that are in beta or have already been launched, we work with your customers to identify changes based on their initial experiences. Vision & Execution clients benefit by avoiding costly mistakes and being able to prioritize decisions based upon importance to customers, strategic importance, and potential profitability.

Do you have a clear understanding of your competition’s strengths, weaknesses, strategies, and customer perceptions about their offering relative to yours? Have you identified the image you want to communicate to customers that conveys the value you deliver such that your company becomes the vendor or choice? Can you successfully position your product as the market leader and stay there? Perhaps you need not vie for market leadership but would be equally successful and profitable by understanding and serving a unique, defensible market segment or niche? Vision & Execution identifies what customers really need and what they believe the competition offers. We develop insights about the unique value proposition your firm delivers to create positioning that separates you from your competition in your target segments. Based on these insights, we help companies uncover highly differentiated brand and market positions which enable you to achieve your sales goals.

Is your sales team straying from the company vision, opportunistically chasing the low hanging fruit while trying to acquire market share? Perhaps they have lost sight of the most profitable target segments. Are you treating all customers equally even if they do not deliver equal value? Vision & Execution conducts market research with current and prospective customers, identifying the opportunities with the greatest demand. We also consider volume and margins in analyzing the profitability of the existing and target customer base and identify the most profitable market segments. Vision & Execution also analyzes any market segments that have emerged as the product or market has matured. In addition to identifying and prioritizing your best target markets, Vision & Execution identifies the best marketing programs to attract each individual segment.

Are you treating all of your customers alike even if they do not represent equal value? It is not atypical for one customer segment to represent well over 100% of your profits, implying that the remaining customers are costing you money. Developing segmentation strategies without understanding the return by customer segment leads to overinvestment in unprofitable segments while the most profitable customers’ needs go unaddressed. Vision & Execution analyzes the customer base to identify the most profitable customers. We factor in usage behavior and cost of servicing the customers. Our analysis enables companies to increase sales through more frequent repeat purchase or cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. At the same time, we identify how you can reduce the cost of selling and servicing these segments. We also help clients implement these changes with programs such as product requirements, pricing, promotions, and distribution. Vision & Execution lets you prioritize your efforts to retain the best customers while increasing the value of most customers.

Are you spending most of your marketing dollars on acquiring new customers? Companies continue to focus on customer acquisition rather than retention despite studies showing that U.S. companies typically lose 50% of their customers over a five year period. Though often overlooked, increasing retention can significantly increase profits. Equally important is identifying the right mix of acquisition and retention based on a reasonable attrition rate for your product or service. Vision & Execution works with organizations to identify the most cost-effective programs for tracking customer satisfaction and evolving purchasing and usage behavior. Based on these insights, we establish the tracking and reporting that enables clients to monitor customers at risk and retain them before they are lost. We also identify customer ‘win-back’ programs when appropriate. Most importantly, Vision & Execution optimizes satisfaction of the highest value customers by defining the right solution suite to increase their profit potential.

Do you suspect that you’re not getting sufficient return for your marketing dollars? Perhaps you’ve tried a variety of approaches without first testing the likely impact. Compelling outbound marketing must ensure that key corporate positioning messages support the individual product messages in a cohesive messaging architecture and communication vehicles. We assess the most cost effective communication vehicles and promotional programs given your market penetration strategy. Vision & Execution manages designers and copywriters to implement your marketing materials and ensure that they stay on strategy for all products and market segments. We make sure that only the most optimal communication vehicles and promotional programs are implemented in support of your communications strategy and messaging architecture.

Are you failing to deliver the right message to the right customer segment? Do you find yourself implementing new programs, only to discover that they have created channel conflict? Vision & Execution determines what types of marketing communications serve each segment best, and then creates superior communication pieces — from brochures, white papers, and sales presentations to print and electronic direct marketing, search engine marketing, and affiliate marketing. Achieve improved ROI from your marketing budget with targeted marketing campaigns delivering the messages your customers need to hear to motivate purchase.

Do you find your sales team having a difficult time securing a sales appointment? Or do you get the meeting but fail to close the deal? Are your sales cycles longer than you would like? Vision & Execution identifies the relevant sales messaging and the most robust sales tools to illustrate value from a customer’s perspective significantly improving your sales team’s productivity and decreasing length of the sales cycle. We identify how and when to apply messaging strategies through the purchase decision phase and how to competitively differentiate your product or service. We determine which sales tools such as demos, presentations, return on investment (ROI) models will best support the needs of your sales team. Further, we isolate which sales messages and tools are best suited for the key decision-maker, as opposed to the purchase influencers, and tailor the sales tools accordingly.

Where does your product fall in the life cycle and how does price competition affect your channel strategy? Do you know what motivates your channels? How secure is your competitive position in relation to existing players and potential new market entrants? How well do you monitor and respond to end-user/consumer trends? Vision & Execution works with companies to align marketing strategies with channel programs. We build a foundation for the future, developing integrated marketing and sales programs that optimize return on marketing investment in a multi-channel environment: Direct Sales, Channel partners, Technology/business partners, E-commerce. We design reward systems that support a multi-channel environment. Our programs ensure that your company maintains end-user relationships while supporting your channels’ success. We identify the metrics that help you understand your most profitable channels while enhancing their ability to satisfy your end-user base.

Which elements of your value chain should be outsourced? How can companies manage power effectively in high power/dependence situations? How can the Internet be used to support, establish and strengthen partner relationships? Companies need to look at their core competencies and consider seriously which value chain activities should be performed internally and which would be best performed by external intermediaries. As more and more companies rely on these partners to help grow their business, it is critical that companies put in place robust partner programs and support. These programs are the cornerstone to attracting the most effective partners and ensuring that they have the tools to be successful. Vision & Execution identifies what's right for your organization and what helps attract the best partners. Vision & Execution creates the tools, policies and marketing materials to support your optimal partner program.

How closely do you track your competition? New companies are emerging every day — small and nimble — ready to attack any perceived weak link. Or, one of your competitors may have been working in stealth mode to develop a new solution, product or feature. Sometimes, internal folklore about who is or is not a competitor prevents companies from preparing the appropriate competitive response. Vision & Execution is exhaustive in its identification and classification of both direct and indirect competitors. As a third party resource, Vision & Execution is in an excellent position to collect data about your competitors that is frequently difficult or impossible for internal resources to gather. We interpret competitive intelligence so that you can differentiate your company or product from even the strongest competitor.

Attempting to move ahead while lacking clearly stated marketing and technical requirements results in developing the wrong product and spinning your wheels during expensive points of the development process. You cannot get to where you want to go without being able to clearly communicate where you want to be. The cost of failing to properly determine and clearly document the requirements is reflected in time to revenue, not to mention spending unnecessary iterations and money during development. Vision & Execution emphasizes getting the requirements right — knowing what your customers and market demand and value. With our combined marketing and technical backgrounds, we are able to clearly state your requirements to ensure success. Our process ensures clients rapidly develop the right products that their customers care enough about to purchase.

Has your company grown organically without a clear process for gathering and prioritizing customer requirements? Do you need to solve customer satisfaction issues but without budget to automate every fix? Do you find yourself at logger-heads with other functional groups delaying finalization of product requirements? Vision & Execution can help you identify not only the core feature set for a product or new release, but also the "wrap-around" services and features such as billing and customer service that ultimately define your success in the market place. By developing a process flow for how your company delivers its product or service — from gaining a customer to follow-on purchases to how you handle losing a customer — Vision & Execution can help you determine what needs to be automated through new features or internal systems, and what can remain a manual process. Further, by utilizing Vision & Execution’s proprietary methodology you will be able to institutionalize a methodology for how to do better product requirements gathering and prioritization, shortening your time to revenue and increasing customer satisfaction.

Without careful managing of the product portfolio companies face a number of risks. Effort can be expended on products that are poorly aligned with the company vision or resources may not be spent where needed to drive product growth. Reactions to a short term crisis can distract focus from the long term goals. New products may not be ready when required to replace products in decline through changes in customer tastes or the competitive environment. Each of these problems limits future revenues — for some companies, failing to manage the portfolio is quickly fatal. Vision & Execution ensures that product direction corresponds with corporate strategy and customer demand, prioritizes resource allocation, and balances risk versus reward across your various opportunities. Sometimes we identify opportunities for streamlining and reducing portfolio complexity. As a result, our clients maximize revenue and profitability while minimizing cannibalization.